![]() One of those earlier attempts, one that Leerhsen dismisses, is Morgan Neville’s 2021 documentary Roadrunner, which generated its own controversy over its use of an A.I.-generated voice reading passages that Bourdain wrote but did not actually record himself. A selling point of Down and Out in Paradise is that unlike earlier accounts of Bourdain’s life, which Leerhsen characterizes as “sanitized and inspiring,” this one features interviews from disgruntled friends and colleagues left behind by Bourdain on his climb to fame. Had Judas written his own gospel in addition to those of Jesus’ four fanboys, we might have a more multidimensional account of the Nazarene’s life. Argento responded to Leehrsen’s request for an interview with an Oscar Wilde quote: “It is always Judas who writes the biography.” All due respect to Wilde, but that statement is most definitely not true. If Leerhsen’s book is an unconscionable violation of Bourdain’s privacy, then so are all biographies, an argument that some people have certainly advanced. With the latter category of book, the celebrity is the person who must be pleased, but when one’s subject is dead? Well, no one wants to read an impersonal biography. Leerhsen, a former Sports Illustrated editor and the author of three previous biographies of such historical figures as Ty Cobb and Butch Cassidy, has also worked as a co-writer for hire on celebrity memoirs for the likes of Brandon Tartikoff and, in 1990, Donald Trump. ![]() Times that his methods are no different from those of biographers past, who relied on such materials as personal letters. ![]() In his own defense, Leerhsen told the L.A. “The estate has not objected” to his inclusion of that material in his book, Leerhsen told the New York Times, “and I don’t anticipate any objections.” Instead, the objections seem mostly to have come from outside observers, who complain, for example, that not everything permitted is also decent, which is true. ![]() As Bourdain’s executor, Busia-Bourdain is in possession of the devices where Bourdain’s texts and emails reside. No one in Bourdain’s immediate family seems to be complaining about the texts, which is hardly a surprise given that they were supplied to Leerhsen by an anonymous source-one who is almost certainly Bourdain’s second wife, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, from whom Bourdain was separated but not divorced. ![]()
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